The Blog

Code, design & inspiration.

Oct 21, 2018 · 4 min read

Good news for all web developers who want to learn Docker or the fantastic Laravel PHP framework. I've recently launched a new micro-platform over at https://courses.goodbytes.be where I'll be adding new video courses on a regular basis. Courses are all in Dutch so only Dutch-speaking developers need to apply at this point in time.
What courses are available?
Docker
Developing and deploying apps in containers with Docker can be confusing at first. My free Docker course brings you and your team up to speed in just one hour. It's a no brainer to take this video course if you want to understand and use Docker in your next project.
Laravel 5.7
Laravel is my favourite PHP framework and a popular choice for many teams and developers around the world. If you are a …

Jan 22, 2018 · 9 min read

Getting started with docker can be daunting at first, just like getting started with any technology you're not yet familiar with. Remember your first steps with vagrant, node, npm, mongodb, sass, js ... or any other tool/technology you thought you didn't need? You'll feel the same about docker.
Let me save you some time and explain the basic concepts to get you started as quickly as possible.
Heads up : I'm recording a free 1-hour video course on how to use Docker. It's in Dutch and you can sign up here .
What is docker and why do I need it for dev's sake?
Docker has been around for a couple of years now and you've probably seen the term containerization pop up in your favourite dev blogs. Well, docker can be seen as exactly that: containers with pieces of …

Jun 22, 2017 · 4 min read

I'm currently in the process of releasing a tool I've been using myself for some time. The tool is called BuzzApp.rocks is geared towards online marketeers. Chances are you are looking for a marketing channel that has a high conversion rate and that is easy to manage. Web push notifications are what you are looking for.
BuzzApp itself is a marketing automation tool that you can use to easily schedule automated web push notification campaigns. Just think of it as MailChimp, but for web push campaigns.
The web is catching up with native mobile apps rather quickly and today you can send push notification to your clients, even when they don't have your website open . The possibilities are rather endless, the only thing to keep in mind is to make sure that your campaigns are …

Aug 31, 2016 · 1 min read

Now that the new college and university season is about the kick off, I'll be training guys and girls who are just getting started with web design and development. I've been teaching for ten years now and have seen most hurdles anyone has to overcome when learning to program and design apps and sites.
I'll ask my students to send in any questions they have about web development, freelancing, getting clients, learning, programming. Each week I'll try to pick out one question that's either interesting to many of my students or that's interesting in its own way.
So go nuts, Ask Me Anything!
Not following any of my classes or workshops? That's ok too, send me your questions using the contact form .

Aug 31, 2015 · 1 min read

Here's the small code snippet needed to quickly log the SQL output for your last executed Eloqent query in Laravel 5. I've had to look this up so many times, that I decided to just post it here for my own convenience. If you forget to enable the query log, you'll notice that it will be empty all the time.
\DB::connection()->enableQueryLog();
$query = \DB::getQueryLog();
$lastQuery = end($query);

Jul 24, 2015 · 3 min read

As web and app designers, we've all been in a situation where we're looking for the most perfect pictures to go with our beloved fonts and color palettes, only to realise later that our users are messing up our designs with overexposed profile pictures and less than average sunset pictures. Just like me, you've probably avoided typing in long and obscure (but realistic) family names that don't really fit that rectangle you just drew in Sketch or Illustrator. Entering a short name that fits and looks perfectly is so much more attractive because it'll make your art boards shine on your iMac. If you want to avoid surprises when launching your app, it's best to design with real and authentic data from the get to. Sketch makes this dead-easy. I'll try to list the plugins I've used over time …

Jun 26, 2015 · 2 min read

On slowing down
It's been a while since I wrote a blog post and one of the reasons is that I'm living a bit slower than before. My job as a web development lecturer has become quite hectic over the last few years and I needed to take a break from client work to manage it all. I remember writing about how life is really moving fast and about things you can do to slow down earlier on this blog. That post is already three years old and man, does time fly.
Slowing down as a web developer is something of a contradiction with all the new frameworks and tools being released at the blink of an eye. In an effort to balance my day job with something a bit more slow moving, I decided to pick up a beekeeping course. One of my friends has been a beekeeper for the past five years and I was …

Sep 15, 2014 · 7 min read

Recently I released a small app called "Stempeltje" that gives store and restaurant owners an easy way to give their clients a digital loyalty card. That way, customers can save up points and exchange those points for free (you know, buy 10 coffees, get one free).
As always, building the app started as just a simple idea but ended up taking up way more time and effort than initially estimated. In this post I'd just like to share some tips and tools that I used to get the app out there. I hope some of these links are useful to you. If you have some other tools I should get to know, let me know in the comments!
sketch + sketch mirror
First, I started drawing out the screens, a logo and the general look and feel of the application. I used to be an avid Photoshop user but since …

Sep 11, 2014 · 1 min read

Just the other day I needed a quick seeder to populate a table in my Laravel project with Belgian postal codes. A quick search gave me all the data in XLS or XML format that would have been easy to import into MySQL, but I really wanted the data to be seeded through Laravel instead. That way, it's much easier to push the seeder to git and migrate all tables on a server or other machine in the future.
I thought it could be useful to other developers in Belgium as well, so here you go, a simple Laravel seeder for Belgian postal/zip codes, together with the city name and province it belongs to.
1 - Get the code on Github
https://github.com/iamgoodbytes/laravel-seeder-belgian-cities
2 - Run artisan
Run artisan migrate:refresh --seed to re-run all your migrations …

Aug 25, 2014 · 3 min read

CentOS 7 is out and if you're like me, you've probably been working on yet another side project you want to bring online. In this short article I'm just writing down some gotchas I ran into when installing and configuring CentOS7 after having working with version 6 for some years.
Installing CentOS 7 via netinstall
I'm a fan of using the netinstall, which downloads the latest version of CentOS for you. All you need to do is download the netinstall ISO, hook it up to your Virtual Box drive and boot into the installer. If you are just looking for the netinstall iso , click here to download the ISO from a Belgian mirror. I'm sticking to this fine Belgian mirror for the installation source as well: http://mirror.myip.be/pub/centos/7/os/x86_64/
Installing a LAMP-stack
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